Anyone have wireless internet access? Totally confused about it

The house I'm living in belongs to my best friend's parents, and I'm renting out part of it. For the past 5 months I've been here I've had to rely on dial-up internet, and it's driving me crazy. However, since their house isn't wired for cable internet, I had no choice. Today at work a coworker was talking about how his new laptop has wireless internet access, and you dont have to install anything in the house to get it, just something new installed in your computer. As you can tell, I have very little knowledge of computers :-)

So, who are some providers of this service? I live in the Twin Cities area of MN, if that helps. It will be for a desktop, not a laptop. Can someone give me some pointers on how this all works out, or point me in the direction of better information? Thanks.

I subscribe to Comcast where I am and they have wireless service.

Just leach off somebody else's service (I'm kidding, of course). I teach some very bright techies and one of my students just wrote a paper on wireless networks. They are all over the place, particularly as you get closer to the cities. There's a program (forgot the name) which scans for the networks and tells you their position and whether it is secured or unsecured.

Personally, I have comcast and while I hate them as a corporation, I like cable internet a lot.

Cher

And we are probably confusing NickB79 now. There is not much choice where I am as far as cable goes so I'm stuck with Comcast. NickB79, if your computer has a wireless card, why don't you turn on your computer and see if you get a signal? Bring up the Windows network interface and see if it can detect a wireless network where you are. Of course if you do get one which lets you surf the web, it probably won't be secure, so exercise caution.

:)

I'm running Linux right now, so I can't navigate too well for you until I boot into Windows. I'll have to get back to you. Or you can click on the Start button, and then go to My Computer and then look for the network interface icon. Try it. If I can do it, you can do it!

I'll check out the control panel and see if I have that icon :)

Thanks:)

I guess I'll wait until my coimputer savvy son pays me a visit.. With my luck I'll do something to disable what I have now, and not know how to un do it :)

:) Sorry I gave you wrong instructions. But you found the icon by yourself, great! The steps I did were:

(1) Go to control panel.
(2) Click on network and internet connections.
(3) Click on network connections (the icon is the planet Earth with a cable plugged into it).
(4) When the window pops up, there should be an icon for Wireless Network Connection. If you single-click on this icon, then a menu appears on the left side of the window. One of the choices on the menu should be "View available wireless networks". And then another window should pop up where it will tell you if there are available wireless networks you can connect to.

Good luck! You can do it!

I'll try this later after I am fully awake :)

:)

If your computer already has a wireless network card installed, then you don't have to install anything else. If you do not see the Wireless Network Connection icon (see my step (4) in my other post), then it's possible you do not have a wireless network card installed.
Do you know what Windows version you are using? The instructions I gave were for Windows XP.

The "view " thing never appeared for me, so Iprobably don't have one..

I hate having to pay so much for cable and if wireless is cheaper, I'd rather do that :)

I pay $60 a month for cable internet..( I have dish TV..and they don't offer it )

I tried verizon DSL, and was too dumb to get it hooked up.. never did work..

and I hate dialup :(

which made me feel really stupid.

It has the PORT for it, and the CAPABILITY, but you most likely have to go buy the little sucker (Fryes, $29.00).

I felt like an idiot when I had a tech head friend look at it and was duly informed I needed an actual little bitty piece of equipment.

A popular hobby for quite a lot of people. It is a lot worse than just "leeching" on the internet connection, most Networks are not protected from attacks by computers in the same network - like the wardriver's.

With the software available for free, it doesn't take any skill, nor much knowledge. Just a notebook and a little patience. Thanks to some idiotic design, most WLANS are unprotected or "protected" by obsolete protocols.

of "wireless internet access". Your friend may have what amounts to a card that accesses the internet using the cell phone system. That provides higher speeds than dial-up in most areas where you can get a good cell phone signal, but it isn't really very high speed. You can get that through Cingular, Verizon and several others.

Then there are ISP's that just use a transmitter and receiver to eliminate the cables, but you have to have a receiver antenna outside your house and a cable that runs to your computer.

Third there are "WiFi Hotspots" that you can connect to using a standard WiFi network card on a laptop (or desktop, if you're close enough). These are typically in coffee shops, restaurants, and stores like Kinko/Fedex. You have to be signed up with the provider, with their connection software.

Fourth would be if a neighbor has internet access and an unsecured wireless network (WiFi). It's not ethical and probablyn not legal, but you could connect to their network and get access that way.

All would be considered "wireless internet".

all using it...

It's not very powerful though, the range isn't great. However I have heard there is some very very hot technology being deployed here in Los Angeles that will change that all very quickly. I was talking to a fellow about this new stuff which has a far deeper penetration of signal which could well knock the gougers like comcast out of business (YAYAYAY! $50 a month, please, ack)

Culver City has deployed a city wide wireless, but again, it doesn't do well through walls or with density, and West Hollywood is about to do the same, although WH may well be grabbing the newer higher density stuff.

AKA, WiFi.

If someone closeby has an 801b frequency wireless, you may be able to hitch into the stream.

It's not necessarily illegal. In some communities there are neighborhood networks that encourage it.

puts out a signal that my neighbors could use if they wanted to.
Its roughly one half a block in a spherical pattern ( allowing for powerlines and treet ).

I SHOULD be using web encryption but I don't . You can sit in your car in front of my house and send emails.

I'd connected a wireless hub to the house network and was running my laptop with a wireless network card.

Had my laptop connected to a printer and next thing I knew, menus for the local Chinese restaurant started printing out every 10 minutes.

Very odd.

Aside from this, the wireless connection worked very well and was easy to setup, but I did need to put my own wireless hub onto an existing network.

Using a wireless station, and a card on a wireless enabled computer -

In this case my Apple 14" iBook combined with SBCs DSL service and Buffalo Technology Wireless base station - it all works flawlessly.

I find the Macs are easier to work with. 802.11 G standard.

http://www.buffalotech.com/products/wireless.php

Check these products out - they may be a clueless and inept company to work for , but their products are good. They also do computer memory.

I have wireless internet (AirPort with my PowerBook G4). But the really neat thing that I am getting is http://www.apple.com/airportexpress">AirPort Express, which lets you play music on your computer on your stereo - wirelessly.

802.11b/g - Wireless Local Area Neworking
802.16-2004 WIMAX Wireless Metropolitan Area Networking

If you are in a house that is equipped with 802.11b/g you need a wireless acess card for your laptop, it slides into the PMCIA slot on the side of the laptop. This litle card contains a special transciever that communicates with either a base station installed in the house, or another 802.11 equipped computer. All 802.11 computers and wireless access points consider each other as peers. It's true that you don't need to add anything new to the house, but that is a tremendous oversimplification of what it takes to connect to resources through a wireless network. IF there is an open network, or hotspot, where you live then you can connect without any trouble. However most smart 802.11 users employ some security measures to keep their network relatively safe from outside intrusion. These measures include using a wireless access point that maintains a database of authorized users based on either a specific authorization code set up by the network owner, or based on the MAC address of the network card installed in the computer.

802.11 networking allows you to connect to traditional wired resources without having to maintain a physical connection to a network access device or modem. However, if the house only uses dialup, then you will only get dialup access through the wireless connection, contrapositively, if they house uses cable or DSL you will get cable or DSL rates through the wireless connection.

The wireless connection takes the place of the phone line between your computer and the phone jack, or your computer and the Ethernet connection to a cable or DSL modem.

802.16-2004 WIMAX Metropolitan Area Networking operates similarly to 802.11b/g however, it is strictly a subscription service, an while appearing only to be only differentiated by the size of the network, has much more in common with a cellular telephone network than it does with 802.11b/g networking. Although you can access network resources (i.e. The Internet) from anywhere in the city (give or take) without having to handoff between towers, this service requires a subscription to a specific carrier. Right now WIMAX is more of a theoretical service than an actual service, althouth I do not doubt that there are some carriers rolling out this service on a trial basis in large cities, I expect it is extremely expensive.